We were blessed with a trip back to the US for about a month as as a family, first time in about three years. These trips are always different...sometimes vacation, sometimes work, sometimes a mix of the two. They are hard to define, and harder to put together. When the kids were younger, they were also very hard on them. This was probably the first one we have done as a family that we would say was an all around relaxing/enjoyable time. All of them before have been good...but they can be stressful, challenging, and tiring. We tried to learn from past mistakes, life lessons, etc. to make this one as good as possible, and it worked pretty well.

More than our planning though, was just how overwhelmingly well everyone we visited took care of us, loved on us, and just made everything so easy, fun, painless and delightful.

I mention that because in talking to other missionaries I find that is more often than not...not the case.

Included in that trip we were able via some very inexpensive tickets, take another overseas trip. This time it just jumped out to me to try to visit some of our friends from Tegucigalpa that live in Barcelona.

It was so good to get to see them again. These are friends from back in our first mission trip days, doing eye brigades together in the rented house that was being used for the Church back then. We got to see all the big tourist sites with much help from them, and they even put us up for our few days there.

While we were there, among many good/interesting conversations...we were talking about living in a foreign country, with a different language (although Spanish is of course spoken...Catalan is what you see on all signs and what everyone born there also speaks with much pride) and maintaining their identity as Hondurans while living in a different country with different standards and norms.

I was thinking about their unique challenges living cross culturally, and then my own. I am constantly reminded (in my own mind) all the times that I feel like I screw that up, or do not make the jump, transition or whatever, successfully...going both ways.

I remember doing counseling a few years ago and the counselor very strongly rejecting my definition of myself as being weird. I never could understand why he thought I was not weird, nor what truth he was seemingly trying to impart to me...it was like hearing someone implore to you in a foreign language, no matter how hard I thought I was listening, I couldn't get it.

Maybe he was getting at that no matter how weird we might feel or seem to others, that the "normal" of who we are, and who we are in God, is what matters? Maybe not to focus on where we feel screw things up, don't understand, or feel like we are sticking out because of who we are...but to concentrate on being God's emissary/missionary/sent worker...no matter in which culture, language, or country we find ourselves. Let Him work the rest out.

I feel a duty to stop this evening and write this post, as often times with blogging, perhaps more for myself than you, dear reader.

Stress is a part of life. Some of us tend to seek/desire/want a low stress life, and boy, I have to agree that sounds good to me. All of us have different levels of stress, and different desired levels.

I am told, and I suppose I recognize, that doing what we do as a family brings a much higher level of stress on many levels than the average Joe. Most of the time, it is manageable. Sometimes less "fun" than others, but it feels like it has a purpose, and therefore can be dealt with, in a number of health, and sometimes not healthy, ways.

Today though was the first time I have found myself ready to quit in 17 years.

From bureaucracy.

What? Yes, that is correct. I am ok with the traffic here. I have a handle on our rep as being such a dangerous place to live. I can somehow live in the delicate wrestle of understanding with the ever-present poverty. I can process the complexities of Church/clinic/kids/coffee/groups work.

But red tape, legalese, and inefficiency really got to me today.

I am not quitting by the way. Oh, and I do not always handle the other things I mentioned above quite well either, but today's bout with the government trying to get our new ambulance into the country without paying the roughly $20,000 in taxes they want pushed me over an edge of sorts.

The rules change, get modified in muddy terms, and foisted on me among others. Even with the help I have in our doctor and lawyer, the double speak, confusing language and lack of an explainable path of action is overwhelming. What would someone just trying to start a business here do?

Ultimately though...if I look deep down inside me, and stop and talk to myself, I find that it all pushes me so far because...I cannot control it. I cannot understand it, and most humiliatingly...I do not understand it. I lack the education, the experience, the...well, I guess I don't know what.

What must others think of me knowing this? How I have failed in my job!

What ego. What foolishness. And the soul crushing stress of it all.

So I prayed before today...I asked God to open doors that are closed, to make smooth the rocky mountain roads of paperwork. And then when I find an area foreign to me, not of my skillset (and others as well I have found out...even an accountant we know was unable to help me with the document that pushed me over the edge with over 100 little boxes to fill out with such minutiae that the vocabulary was totally beyond me) I jumped the faith ship and just flailed in the pity pool, ready to sink.

We may not be able to complete the paperwork. We may have to pay the taxes. I am firmly aware of our need for much greater accounting/government reporting representation here and we will be hiring someone to train our staff to handle that in the coming weeks/month. I won't be able to really help with that, even if I wanted to do so.

Sometimes we need a bit of a knock down to remember our place in this world. To remember that God answers all prayers, but that sometimes the answer is no, or not now. To remember that we will never excel in every area, even if we think we should.

I am not sure my reading of Paul's words in light of today is correct or not, but I do not see him writing in 2 Corinthians 12... "9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." ...in a strong, confident voice. I hear God's voice in that reassuring, soft and condescending, like a loving parent to a small child who is throwing a fit, knowing that it is hard for the child to understand. I hear Paul crying as he says those words of verse 10...knowing they are true, feeling that love, and wrestling with the feelings of the heart mixed with the knowledge in the head and of the soul.

We had opportunity last week to host a site visit from US surgeons, looking for areas where they can serve. Darwin set up appointments at the two public hospitals here to see what possibilities there would be to have them help.

The interviews we had in both hospitals were quite enlightening. I have some experience going into both to visit with groups, but nothing on this level of administrative sides of things, and to learn more of the needs, as well as the goals and how the hospitals work.

I learned that Hospital Escuela, the main public hospital for the entire country, has 13,000 beds in the hospital. (Darwin has routinely told me that every day there are 20,000 patients between inpatient and outpatient...knowing how many beds there are helped me believe that seemingly inflated number.)

I also learned that the general surgeries going on at San Felipe across town were not being done because that was part of the hospital's mission. It was odd to hear to start the meeting the five areas of focus for the hospital...especially when general surgery was not one of those areas. Turns out, the only reason the hospital does general surgery is because of the overwhelming need in the population that Hospital Escuela cannot handle. Even then...just one of the doctors we met with, to show just how big the need was, told us he had more than 400 patients on his waiting list.

Here is where you can pray...in general for a system here that has good doctors and administrators fighting to give the population here the care it needs. It is a different kind of battle, very complex, and sometimes on many fronts...with finances, circumstances, other administrators, etc.

You can also pray because after seeing the installations there, and the installations we have at the clinic, the surgeons decided that the best place where they could help and do that to honor Christ would be with us in the clinic. There is nothing definite at this point, just a decision to pray, and for us to budget how much a surgical wing would cost, and see where God takes it from there. Surgery has been an area for the clinic (possibly future hospital?) that has been a dream a long time coming. Many years in fact. Somewhat patiently, we wait. Right now that seems much closer...but again I warn us (read: myself), that while we plan, work and pray, that for the most part this is very much up in the air. Just pray that God's will would be done...and that it would be clear and present to us who routinely need refreshers on that.

This past Saturday I got to make the trip up to the coffee farm above Sampedrana. We had a very special visitor in Patty Fancher from CIY, and given that many a CIY group in the past several years has spent several days up on the farm and at the Church, it seemed a great thing to get to show her what is going on, especially for future possible groups (as in...the CIY group upcoming in June), and also a good time for us to test the road to the farm out again with a Ford to see how it is faring and where some repair/maintenance might be needed as the rainy season approaches.

We got quite a few new pictures to show the progress on the farm, and a few videos (processing still a video of the entire drive from Comayagua to post...somewhere) but they really do fail to capture the beauty, the impressive slopes of the property/area, and the huffing and puffing inducing altitude when combined with the previously mentioned slopes. The sky seems clearer, the breeze more steady and occasionally gusting, and from an administrative standpoint...the needs for further improvements and development staggering.

Just as staggering is the progress already made. We struggled for a few years getting things off the ground, but this past year has been very good, and we expect another almost two acres to be planted with coffee this year. We are almost at 50% planted as we stand. We still need this year to also build a bunkhouse for when harvest comes for where workers can stay, that will be a big project yet to come.

Alfonso, Patty, Henry and Oscar near the entrance to the property, with the first ledge to the left with coffee showing. The nursery is way up there by that lone tree at the top of the hill, which is only about half way up the property overall

Seen here is the farm, at least in the part you can see from the road we built leading to it...there is more on the other side of the ridge. The small puffy trees on the right near the middle of the picture are our avocado trees. The line that goes up and to the left, to the right of the avocado trees marks a cleared line, but the property line goes further up the mountain from there. To the left of the avocado trees are coffee trees.

You might be asking yourself...how much property is there? Well, that is a good question. The exact answer is unknown really, as we have not had anything that could be called an exact measurement. I have not even been able yet to get to the top of the property myself. But the nearest that has been figured is about 20 acres. And we have roughly half planted with coffee, somewhere around 32,000 trees, with another 6,000 to be planted in the coming year.

You might also be asking yourselves...how bad is the road? Well, although rain has visited Tegucigalpa several times in the last week, it has not reached Sampedrana yet, so it was in very good shape. There are a couple places that need widening a bit, and a couple where the underground tiles need concrete poured to set them more firmly in place.

Here you can see the reverse picture a bit...some of the avocado trees (which grow but not tall because of the altitude) and then looking back...just a bit of the interesting road that leads to the farm winding around the mountain

On our way back down the hill, we stopped to talk at the Church before heading home. We were talking about how we can better help Alfonso financially on a regular basis (also looking at getting his daughter a scholarship somehow from the US to be able to go to High School...which in addition to requiring money, would require her to relocate down the hill with extended family) and how we would like to see more avocados and raspberries (already growing wild...we picked two pounds just while chatting) and other fruit trees on the property to not only have the property providing employment but also food we can sell and give away to the workers, Church, and others in the community.

I noticed quite the pile of wood, and someone cutting wood in the back of the property. I asked Henry about this. The woman cutting the wood has her common law husband in jail, and four daughters to feed. Why her husband is in jail is a very sad and tragic story. He has not been sentenced yet (that takes a while) but likely will not be out soon given the circumstances. Their family has been helping them where they can, but Henry was wanting to help more. So they are getting oak wood to put into the smoker (home made, seen in the background) and make charcoal to sell. That is a lot of wood. Apparently you strip the outside bark off so that in the fire, it turns to charcoal and does not instead just burn up.

We were hoping to test a new option for transportation to and from the farm, a modified moto taxi. Unfortunately it was not ready for the trip, but as we progress, finding better transportation to replace the motorcycle will also be a priority. Going up and down that mountain for five years has taken a toll...and constant repairs are not exactly easy up there. Life though is not easy up there in many ways. But wow, it is beautiful.

The KMF 250 has served Alfonso well on the tough mountain roads, but is well past its prime for sure.

We also stopped by to see the small one acre farm down from the Church, and the walking bridge the CIY group built last year. Optional hand rail to come later...much later.

The term Good Friday has always bugged me. It is Holy for sure...but good? I get it on an intellectual level that it is in fact good, but thinking of if I were there that day, it certainly would not have felt good...either in paying the price for my sin myself, or watching Christ do it for me.

I have been thinking about that this week...it is constantly challenging and seemingly at odds with just the way us people think. God is like that...so much bigger than us.

This week the Church in Sampedrana celebrated their 10th anniversary. The picture here of the Sunday service. There were some special guests in there, but it is amazing to think how much God has grown this body in the last decade, through many highs, and lows, times of trail and great blessings. There were many people involved in making this come together, both in Honduras and in the USA, but it was and is clearly all God.

Cecilia had her fourth embassy appointment this week regarding passports. If you had asked me when I was 25 if I would ever have a child, that the child would be born outside the US, and that the child would spend their first 15 years fully living in another culture/country, I would have laughed. God is certainly bigger than my puny imagination back then...and now.

The stories abound, I am not capable of telling all of them that surround us, that work around us, through us, and in spite of us.

I picked these two from this week, a week that for most in Honduras has more to do with hitting the beach than it does a spiritual emphasis. (Resurrection Sunday is historically the least attended Sunday by far of the year) But really it is overwhelming in both a smile producing and even sometimes scary, but good, way.

It gives me a little more pause when I think that, and then of John 21:25 "Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."

There was good news Thursday when Jesus commanded us to love one another (which I am guessing every year since has seemed like a radical, more-needed-now-than-ever idea)

There was good news Friday when Jesus culminated a live lived fulfilling the law, and paying the price for our sin in His death.

There was good news Sunday when He rose from the dead, aka Resurrection Sunday.

There is good news for us every day...regardless what we see around us, if we focus and keep our foundation on Him, and Him alone, and do what He said. And that is a good story worth telling over, and over, and over.

Sometimes life at the clinic can be...well not quite boring, but perhaps routine. Every day there are difficulties, and patients with needs that outstrip what we can currently do, in every area of the clinic. Last week though we had yet another patient that is almost becoming routine...the ones where we are very concerned they might die.

Jennifer is 13 and was having extreme breathing problems. We are working on getting our own oxygen system (an investment of about $1,000...not sure yet how that will come about) but in the meantime somehow the family knew a neighbor with a portable system we used until an ambulance could show up to get her to the hospital, which sometimes can be a very lengthy process. This time it was under an hour total, which was amazing.

We won't speculate here as to what provoked this near heart attack, but it was scary for all involved.

This is just one very extreme example that reminds us to ask you to pray for the staff of the clinic, that ministers to the patients that come seeking answers daily. Answers for physical problems, but also often for problems that run much deeper.

Also join us in prayer for the ambulance we are working on buying. That will be a future blog post with all the details once it gets here and we start the process of putting it to work, hopefully by late May. Already though we see its needs for our community.

To say this is a dream a long time coming might be a bit of a stretch, but it is certainly a very welcome change.

You see, we now have our own cement mixer, thanks to Crossroads Community Church. Mixing on the ground will still happen of course, but for the big jobs, having this will save time and backs. It is quite the useful tool.

We were able to purchase it, and then get it right to work this week, pouring the beams/footers/headers for the Milk Project building, a task that will need 70 bags of cement/concrete to finish.

After pouring, there are other tasks to accomplish (like stairs...stairs to go up from the "basements" would be much easier than using the ladder!) while that cures for a few weeks, and then the work can continue by the much bigger task...doing all the prep work and then pouring the roof/second story floor.

That will be a huge step for us in terms of expense but also completion. Once that is done (hopefully by May) we will be able to see how warm the building is in terms of cooling need (false ceilings, fans, and hopefully seeing if we can avoid AC because of the one time and long term costs associated with it) and be able to start tackling interior walls, electrical, etc.

Please join us in prayer as we continue on this big project...we are on schedule and on budget, just needing "a little" more money to make sure we can finish everything properly and move in by the end of the year!

I had been wrestling with posting something for some time. Within the last week or so several things pushed me in this direction.

So sometimes I feel quite isolated. Some of that comes from within, related to my personality and how I perceive the world. And some not. I am probably not alone in that. Every time the phone rings, I expect that contact to be initiated because the party on the other end needs something. Which is true...because that is my job, for one, and secondly because sometimes being the guy that reaches out or is outgoing is hard. But of course my view is that it is #1's fault more than #2.

I have felt that way for a while now. It was not until hearing another foreigner at the airport say virtually the same thing, out loud mind you, with a heavy heart and sorrow not anger or frustration, that I realized I was not alone.

Sometimes I have a hard time interacting as well with others, or at least those that I see on a daily basis who struggle with huge issues of money, abuse, lack of education opportunities, healthcare, immigration, crime, corruption...you know, the small stuff. How do I ask the tough questions and then actually listen, and what do I do? What can I do? What should I do? Ooof. Sometimes then that means avoiding asking questions because you know what the answer will be and you do not want to hear it, lest you have to do something with that information.

We have weekly devotionals as a leadership, and that came up from someone else last week. Wait...again, this is not just me, as another out of touch gringo? That was a revelation, and a reminder. A reminder that no matter where you come from...caring can take a lot out of you, even if you don't know what you are going to do after step one of just caring.

Thankfully there was someone else there to remind me that sometimes step one is sometimes where it ends (Not all the time of course!) people just want to be heard, to have a place to get things off their chest where they will be heard without judged, ratted out, or the like. There are times when we are moved to action, but it does not have to feel like that is what we are supposed to do every time...sometimes instead of asking more questions, we just need to listen, to cry, to sympathize, to pray...to care.

Grace is so important to our lives. God's grace sometimes is overwhelmingly felt, sometimes seemingly absent, and sometimes the gap between the two can be easy street or deafening in silence.

When visiting Valle de Angeles with the last team, Valerie and I ventured off to see more of the town. We have had the pleasure of being able to go together for these trips the last several times, so we are definitely seeing more and more of the town, not that it is huge.

This time we found the cemetery. I have always had an odd, hard to explain fascination with cemeteries. Always wanted to live next door to one...quiet neighbors.

Walking through this one is like many in Honduras...markers representing every level of wealth and/or affection, and many places of seeming overlap.

Long lives, short lives. Full lives, and bad breaks. I could write a book what I think about all this. But instead, as often happens, this will be a themed post...bad breaks. ​Our first is our sister Maria Esteban. This woman lives in a perpetual state of trusting the Lord for everything. She and her family have constant bouts of illness and she lost her husband last year.

She fell and broke her arm and came to the clinic. I was impressed how everyone sprang into action to help...eventually reaching my ear to authorize some money she would need if she was going to be able to visit the public hospital to hopefully get the surgery she needed. As often happens here though, the appointment was missed for one reason or another, and the surgery did not happen as the clinic had arranged. After finally getting her back into the clinic, we found out the pain had subsided for the most part and some mobility has returned...as the bone tries to heal itself. After three weeks, it was too late to do surgery. So, for ow we will keep an eye on her every month, start helping her with some monthly food stipends, and praying she does not fall again. ​

There are times when I really wish God would open doors for us to have someone with the time and expertise to start a Co-op or savings program among our staff and any other friends/Church members.

Saving here is hard, especially when it is not a skill passed on/taught (Honduras being far from alone in that regard.) Here is a house that belongs to one of the mission's employees. It was broken into last year. Thankfully we were able to loan them the money to buy blocks to build a proper security fence around the property, with them starting to do all the labor required in the evenings and on weekends. But that is not a long term fix really in more ways than one.

​The clothing shipment that came in late January, we came to discover, suffered from a hole in the roof of the container. Not sure when it happened, but that hole allowed enough water to enter to ruin about 10 boxes of shoes. Here you can see the imprint of some of the shoes to get an idea how much water was inside. The smell and sight of mold made salvaging anything of those boxes not possible.

The worst part is that to make a claim on the insurance, we would have to spend $300, and take a chance (a big chance I was told) that the company in the US would actually even compensate us, and if so...hard to tell to what extent. Rather than gamble on taking all the time, fuel, and $300, we decided to suck it up, so to speak.

We learned just this week that pastor Edwin (seen here happy that the clothing is back in January since he does not get a salary and depends on the clothing to provide for his family while he works as a pastor full time in Danli) lost the bicycle that he got last year from another ministry.

Turns out, while he was visiting the clothing store and had it parked just outside...it was stolen.

Bikes are a common way to get around here...when the part of the country you are in is relatively flat, such as it is in Danli. Now we need to see how we can help get another bike to use.

I posted this picture before, but did not explain the rock seen below. While we were leaving Sampedrana, the group reports this rock was thrown at them in the back of the truck. Thankfully it hit one of the bars and broke in two.

Was it thrown on purpose at them? At the truck? At the motorcycle? Was it an accident? Hard telling. It did happen in the right spot to be from some that are continually not thrilled with a Christian Church presence, but it is impossible to know for sure. What we do know is that there is resistance to the Church in this world...more in some places like Sampedrana, less in others perhaps.

Bad breaks happen. I believe there is another shorter way to express that, but we won't cover that here.

Theologically speaking we can talk about why, the causes, etc. but the real takeaway should be...

1. I post these things because it is real life. Real life is not like social media or other ways we usually share things, only the positive, happy, look-at-me-doing-everything-right, things. We have things we regret, that we wish we could do better, that we struggle how to handle.

2. God is bigger than the bad breaks. He uses them to mold us, to change us, to help others, to live more like Him. Man, sometimes that sounds so hollow, so trite, but it is true. If we change our point of view, and our attitudes, these things can be flipped on their head so far as to be comically hard to understand.

Case in point...Acts 5:12-42

Here you have two guys working for Christ, doing good stuff. Some other guys come down on them, tell them to shut up about this Jesus stuff, and then even flog them (originally wanting to kill them), and when Peter and John leave...they rejoiced, after just having been flogged, for being counted worthy to suffer for Christ.

And they kept proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.

So bad stuff happens, sometimes it hurts, sometimes really hard as to break your heart. May God give us the grace, strength and perseverance to keep proclaiming His good news!

Good transportation for our pastors has been an ongoing issue for years. We have wrestled with it for a long time, and finally think we are on the right track to help the pastors, the Churches, and in the long term not creating a situation we will have to fix again anytime soon, and hopefully foster the Churches long term providing replacement themselves if they choose.

Trying to balance the needs of transportation, the locations, reliability, and...everything else related to vehicles, we have come to a realization:

When buying pickups for groups...stick to the Ford SuperDuty.

When buying vehicles for Churches, ambulances, and just about every other need here...the Toyota Land Cruiser 78 (aka here in Honduras "Land Cruiser Ambulance" because of its wide use by the government and Red Cross as ambulances) is the way to go.

These vehicles seat 13 (with seatbelts, but for Honduras I believe that has been stretched to 20...even though some might say fitting 13 North Americans in there would be a stretch.)

The rock solid reliability of these vehicles, which have had the same very durable 4.2L inline 6 cylinder diesel engines since the mid 90's, is legendary. Not built with luxury in mind, but definitely to work and last. Parts availability is pretty good for the most part, and they are not overly complicated.

The first of these we bought was from the Peace Corps for Sampedrana back in 2009. It is still in the "fleet." We bought a slightly nicer but almost exactly the same one from Oscar for Talanga, and amazingly found another former Peace Corps vehicle that we bought for Cantaranas. (These do not come up for sale often.) The gentleman that bought it from the Peace Corps that we did in 2009 basically had not used it since then, so those two are identical with two fuel tanks, built in winch, and all three have the very handy roof rack which is quite functional and necessary.

We have signed contracts of use for the vehicles with the pastors, who will do the regular maintenance on them, fill out milage reports, and pay the registration every year. We will cover getting them all registered with insurance as part of the mission's support.

You can see in the pictures that they are taking Bibles back with them as well. These monthly pastor meetings have been great for teaching (does baptism really matter? was this month's topic) encouragement, and as well to help get supplies we have out to them...this month needed Bibles, corn for distribution, and more school shoes that we received to bless all the Churches with, which was great and they got to share and see which were best for each area.

This month was extra special because the pastor in San Juancito has a full time job and thus cannot normally come to the meetings, but this week he was on vacation, pastor Noel (who happens to be Jonathan's brother) so all five Churches were represented.

All these pastors are going through transition, challenges, and different tough times. Please join us in praying for each of them, for the Churches, and the continually development of leadership in each Church and how we can encourage them in their steps towards independence by God's grace.